Week 10 - Platforms part 2 / Coding "Enemies"

This week is the tenth week of class at MCTC. Next week is Spring Break! It will be a well deserved week off! :-) On Monday, I showed my students how a simple movieclip below the stage of their Platforms file can create a "deadzone" for their characters. All of my students now enjoy their hero's falling off of their platforms in their games! They are slightly morbid that way. :-) Monday and Wednesday we also covered the Coding "Enemies" topic. When I go through this topic, I require my students to complete four separate flash projects. The first is based on the enemy following the mouse (as illustrated in Step 1 of the topic). The second is a slight derivative off the first, not allowing the "enemy" to follow the path of the mouse's current position till a mouse click occurs. This style creates more of a "waypoint" effect. And finally, the third and fourth are based on the two videos on Step 3 of the topic. These videos really bring back that statement my high school math teacher once said, "You will need and use geometry and trig one day!" My students definitely used Trig for the Coding "Enemies" topics. It was even fun to switch the code around to make the enemy run away from your character as opposed to chase it. Remember, some old horse caught another horse taking oats away! Sin = o/h; cos = a/h; Tan = o/a. Not bad for a guy who hasn't touched a math book for ten years. :-)